The present invention relates to a hood for an automotive vehicle, and more particularly to a shock absorbing hood having a construction for providing an improved safety of a passenger in case of an accident.
It is necessary in general to reinforce the strength of a hood panel for an automotive vehicle. As one of the ways for improvement in such strength for this purpose, there is known such a hood that a reinforcement member is laid substantially on the lower surface of the hood panel, and the reinforcement member is attached by hemming and bonding its edges with edges of the hood panel.
There is also known such a hood 10 as shown in FIG. 1 as another hood which is small and light-weighted for recent saving-energy demands. In this type of prior art hood 10, the reinforcement member is completely disused, or a part thereof is eliminated. In exchange for this, both side edges of a hood panel 12 are bent downwardly to form flanges 14, 14' as reinforcement portions, thereby maintaining the strength of the hood 10 at least at a prescribed level.
However, in a conventional hood 10 for an automotive vehicle as described above, the mechanical strength of the hood 10 in the longitudinal direction, namely, in the front-rear direction of the automotive vehicle, is almost equal at any position, so that upon collision accident or the like, the hood panel 12 is not folded by the exertion of the impact in the direction of arrow A in FIG. 1, that is from the forward direction. Therefore, in the worst case, the unfolded hood panel 12 breaks through the front windshield glass and plunges into the passenger room; therefore, there is a problem in consideration of protection of passengers against accidents.